Kansas Rules Against Electricity... by Alan Caruba

Kansas Rules Against Electricity
By Alan Caruba

I wonder if the folks at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment think that electricity is made by fairies who live in the garden or that an army of elves produce it?

On October 19, a Washington Post article was headlined “Power Plant Rejected Over Carbon Dioxide for First Time.” Let’s hope it is the last time or those of us around the nation who depend on coal to produce over 50% of the electricity we use are in big trouble.

Roderick L. Bremby, Secretary of the Kansas DHE, said, “it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing.” So the KDHE killed a proposal by Sunflower Electric Power, a rural electrical cooperative, to build a pair of big, 700-megawatt, coal-fired plants in Halcomb.

Someone needs to tell Secretary Bremby that greenhouse gases consist of 95% water vapor in the earth’s atmosphere. Or that not a single blade of wheat or corn would grow in Kansas were it not for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Someone needs to tell Secretary Bremby and his fellow global warming simpletons that, between 1970 and 2004, the population of the United States grew by 40%, its Gross Domestic Product by 18%, and electricity consumption by 115%. During that same time period, the aggregate air pollution of the U.S. was cut in half due to advances in pollution control technologies.

The United States Department of Energy predicts that overall electricity demand will grow by 45% between now and 2030.

The plants in question would have provided power to parts of Kansas and to eastern Colorado. Presumably, electricity is needed by residents, industries and the farmers of Kansas, so where will it come from? To produce anywhere near what the two plants would produce, Kansas would need border-to-border wind turbines or be entirely covered over by solar collectors.

It happens that the U.S. has tons and tons of coal. When used to produce electricity, it costs half as much as using natural gas. While the people in Kansas are using electricity, an estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide lack any access to it. An estimated 2.4 billion still rely on biomass—wood, crop waste and dung—for cooking and heating.

Meanwhile, despite fears that Kansas will tip the planet into an inferno of global warming, China is building a new coal-burning plant every week. India is making similar plans to provide for its growing energy needs.

This is what happens when people responsible for making decisions like where the electricity comes from believe in fairy tales that global warming is “a moral issue” and not one to be based on science. Kansas Governor Sebelius, in her state address said, “The question of where we get our energy is…no longer just an economic issue, not solely an issue of national security. Quite simply, we have a moral obligation to be good stewards of this state.”

It is hard to believe that the leader of a state where agriculture is a major part of its economy would think that its farmers and ranchers are disinterested in being good stewards of the land. It is even harder to believe that Gov. Sebelius thinks that a lot of businesses and industry in Kansas isn’t going to go somewhere else if they cannot secure energy at a reasonable cost.

On the other hand, in his book, “The Late Great U.S.A.” Jerome Corsi noted that, “the Council of Kansas City voted on May 18, 2006, to name the Mexican customs facility the ‘Kansas City Customs Port’, despite the fact that it is actually a Mexican possession, staffed by Mexican government customers officials. The $3 million facility will be paid for by Kansas City taxpayers, not by the Mexican government.”

You cannot invent stuff like this, just like you cannot believe that Kansas is more concerned about global warming than it is about providing the electricity its people will need in the years ahead.

This is what happens when the Supreme Court of the United States rules that carbon dioxide, the most essential gas other than oxygen to all life on earth, is a “pollutant.”

This is what happens when the lies behind the global warming myth become a reason to reject electrical generation at half the cost of other forms.

This is what happens when Kansas decides it’s more important to become a hub for the import of cheap goods produced in places that pay their workers a pittance while contributing far more CO2 than we do while ceding sovereign U.S. territory to Mexico!

At this rate, in States around America and in Congress, our economy is going to be wrecked by the “environmentalists” who, like the former Soviet sympathizers of the last century, were considered “useful idiots” by Vladimir Lenin.

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, http://www.anxietycenter.com/. His daily blog can be read at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/.

© Alan Caruba, November 2007

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